Tag: Conversation

To converge is to come together from many places, effectively meeting in on common area.

Digital marketing thrives on many platforms, but what makes the difference is how a marketer can successfully bring them together. When convergence through a digital marketing strategy is done successfully, it ensures that the consumer has a seamless brand experience.

So, how might one achieve convergence?

Step One: Keep the Consumer in the Center

Consumers are becoming giants, and I mean that in the best way possible. They are empowered, informed, active and connected. This means that every step of the way in your digital campaign they are playing a role. Convergence in a digital campaign demands that the consumer interacts in a consistent manner, effectively getting your message out there.

How are we going to bring multiple digital platforms together under one campaign? Think about where you want the consumer to end up, what you want them to do along the way, how you want them to effortlessly go from one platform to the other and what you want the experience to mean to the consumer. Keep the consumer at the center, because anticipating and planning their journey can help you determine how you’ll bring together all of the different digital platforms.

Step Two: Use Your Data

What do you want or need to know about your consumer for your campaign to effectively work? What do you know about consumers who perform certain actions on digital platforms? How are you going to connect different platforms together in a meaningful and successful way?

Data is a powerful resource that can help you answer the above questions. When you are aiming to converge your digital campaign it is important to know how your consumers interact online. Different measures can give you different results, depending on what you need to know.

You might be looking at engagement analytics on various social platforms, event tracking on your website, remarketing efforts, audience demographics or even consumer e-commerce behavior. All of the data you collect throughout the campaign can tell you who your audience is, what they are doing and how well your campaign is doing.

Step Three: Maintain One Campaign, and Merge Your Media

Consistency in tactics is key. Once you have your campaign message you don’t want to go changing it up on every platform. However, it is important to note that on each of your media platforms you might have a slightly different audience that receives things differently. They have different sets of needs, so it is beneficial to appeal to them in an effective way, while still maintaining a consistent campaign message.

Digital marketing strategies should be integrated, just as any marketing strategy should be. Your database, social media, email, website and any other digital marketing platforms in one campaign should be unified and used to enhance each other and the overall campaign message. It is also important that you get consumers to engage with you on several digital media platforms. For instance you might want consumers interacting with you on Facebook for a certain campaign to go to your website, where an action can be taken.

Key Takeaways

Digital media platforms are a powerful tool for accelerating your campaign, and it is important to connect them and unify the campaign message through them. With so many options to reach consumers under this umbrella of digital marketing it is important to remember that while there are different audiences, the main goal is for them to take action. Converging your digital media and driving engagement, hopefully with the end goal of sales in mind, should be an important piece to any digital marketing strategy.

Leave me a comment telling me how you converge your digital media, or how you have seen it done successfully. Feel free to Tweet me @akannakeefe with the hashtag #MyMktgStory telling me your thoughts!

When you Tweet out a brand hashtag, attend a brand event or interact with a brand in other ways for the latest, coolest campaign you are adding to a brand conversation, and you are participating with a community around a brand. It’s all part of a marketing strategy, but it doesn’t feel pushy or promotional. Why? Because the consumer is willingly participating in the conversation and the community, which ultimately makes the entire experience more authentic. Check out this blog article for some examples of what community marketing can include.

Community marketing focuses on existing consumers, and engaging them in your brand.

This leads us to community marketing and why it matters.

First, Let’s Talk About Community.

A community is a group of people that share common beliefs, interests and goals. Communities are also social organizations, and can share similar cultures. As humans, we naturally gather into communities, and we thrive in them as social beings. This is good news to marketing, and may be interesting especially if you enjoy the psychology behind marketing.

Communities Share

Communities share among themselves, and this is where word-of-mouth marketing and active consumer interaction come into play. If you can engage your current customers, you can continue to build relationships with them. This is an entirely different approach than marketing to potential consumers.

Communities become brand advocates, and typically we also see the innovators and early adopters in communities. An overplayed, but valuable example is Apple enthusiasts. Apple has built one of the strongest communities surrounding their brand. This community is rooted in the fact that they believe in the vision of Apple, and they support it 100%. This is why people line up for hours for new releases, and why people will argue undoubtedly why Apple is better than any other personal device brand. The Apple community will share why they love Apple with friends, family and even strangers, creating a network of Apple advocates around the world.

Communities Support

To discuss and illustrate this point let’s start with an example.

Fitbit, the smart fitness device has created a community to help people support one another through their fitness goals. Fitbit uses a game-type setup through their app and website to get users to compete with friends and family. This creates a culture of support, and a little bit of healthy competition, among users. The seamless integration of the software with the fitness device is a great selling point, and the competition that users have with one another gets them talking about the Fitbit and spreading the word.

Why Should You Create a Conversation?

Conversations are one way to create authenticity and trust with your consumers. While social media is the one platform we may think of when creating and sustaining conversations with consumers, there are other ways to do it. Community marketing can happen wherever the community is, and the conversation should be something the community is interested in.

Authentic Conversations

One of the struggles that marketers have when trying to have a conversation with a consumer is how to make it seem authentic. One of the best examples of where these authentic and real-life conversations take place is on Snapchat. This Hubspot article goes into depth about it, and brings up some great points. Two of the points that the article makes are that Snapchat “enables realness” and “puts social media back into these personal, organic moments”. This one-to-one type interaction enables conversation from a brand to the consumer in a more authentic and down-to-earth kind of way. While Snapshat is just one example, the important thing to keep in mind is that it’s all about authenticity and being real with consumers.

Key Takeaways

Marketing is trending towards more authentic experiences and interactions and building and sustaining communities. Real life, down to earth brands are characteristics that consumers are looking for and willing to support. Having a brand community and participating in conversations with consumers are two ways to enhance a brand. Are you involved in any brand communities? Do you participate in brand conversations? Tell me below and Tweet me @akannakeefe with the hashtag #mymktgstory.

About Me

I am a marketing graduate from the University of
Northern Colorado. Marketing isn't just my discipline, it is my passion. My passion for marketing is telling the story of a brand, it’s helping to serve the community, and it’s finding the sweet spot at the intersection of data and creativity.